Greenhouse agriculture in Kazakhstan
A story of greenhouse agriculture in Kazakhstan
local food
Make Jerusalem artichoke soup
Here's a great vegetarian recipe with in season Jerusalem artichoke to help you cut some meat out of your diet: What I particularly like about this soup is that the usual potato for making it "hearty" is absent. Instead, ground almonds thicken it slightly, leaving room for the chokes to shine through with lightly spicy flavors.
Artichokes and Oranges: December’s Seasonal Produce
It’s officially winter in the Middle East. We’d hoped it would be raining now, but climate change is often evident in blue skies and dry ground everywhere. While we have Covid in 2020, open-air markets are usually ringing with the shouts of vendors and the bustle of shoppers. But even as we dream about wandering […]
November’s Seasonal Produce
November in the Middle East offers a colorful spread of fruit and veg, including some heritage varieties.
What’s in season May
Sour green plums the size of large marbles are in the local Middle East markets now, a seasonal favorite of the Iraqis. Eat them out of hand as a snack, sprinkling each bite with a little salt. The classic Iraqi way to cook them is to pair them with meat in a flavorful stew. And if you want to ask for them in Persian just say "Gojeh sabz!"
What’s in season April
April's biggest bargain is fresh, green garlic
Humans possess intelligence when it comes to selecting a nutritious diet
Studies have shown animals use flavour as a guide to the vitamins and minerals they require. If flavour serves a similar role for humans, then we may be imbuing junk foods such as potato chips and fizzy drinks with a false ‘sheen’ of nutrition by adding flavourings to them. In other words, the food industry may be turning our nutritional wisdom against us, making us eat food we would normally avoid and thus contributing to the obesity epidemic.
Food in season in March
If you live in the near Middle East or the middle Middle East, or are just visiting - take this handy guide with you to find and taste what's in season for the month of March.
Indigikitchen shows the young and indigenous their food roots
Mariah Gladstone’s childhood laid the perfect foundations for the work she does these days, breathing new life into Indigenous Peoples’ food traditions through her online cooking show Indigikitchen.
World’s best eatery NOMA reborn as an urban farm
Celebrity chef and foraging superstar René Redzepi told the New York Times on Monday that he is closing his Copenhagen restaurant Noma at the end of 2016 and resurrecting it in 2017 with a new menu and a new site in an urban farm setting. This man on a radical new mission had led a popular restaurant […]
Palestinians cultivate the West Bank’s first organic mushrooms!
It’s been weeks since a Palestinian vegetable vendor from the West Bank town of Jericho last imported mushrooms, selling instead homegrown organic ‘shrooms grown for the first time in the West Bank. Amoro Mushroom Farm in Jericho – the first farm in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to commercially produce white mushrooms – is emerging as a […]
Eatwith, The Airbnb for Foodies
There’s a new business afloat that links people to people for the purpose of sharing authentic local dining experiences. I found EatWith.com a month too late for this summer’s vacation, but there’s always next time. I’m fresh back from a few weeks in Europe, a family reunion through Paris and Venice and Rome that doubled […]
Yummy Okra Stewed In Tomato Sauce Recipe
Lady’s Fingers – a poetic name for a day-to-day vegetable, also known as okra. Maybe the lovely pale yellow flower sheds a little poetry over the seed pod that grows out of its heart, and which we eat as a vegetable. In the Middle East, we call it bameeyah.
Egypt’s Frightening Food Poverty On The Rise
According to a recent report, 81% of Egyptians don’t have enough to cover their monthly food bill A recent government survey has revealed an increasing number of Egyptians are struggling to clothe and feed themselves whilst keeping a roof over their heads. The report by the Egyptian Food Observatory found that of the 1680 households […]
Zööba: Egyptian Street Food Goes Inside
Ordering a foul or falafel sandwich at any fast food chain or street vendor in Cairo puts consumers one step closer to triple bypass surgery. This has less to do with the food itself than it does with how it is prepared, since Egyptian cuisine, a fluid, nebulous thing fraught with the influence of so many […]